@bloodshedder: I agree, whole heartedly. I won't be giving up my keyboard and mouse for a lonnngg time. Something must be engraved into my soul that it is easier to lift a finger rather than my whole arm.

However: The thought of having a touch screen for multimedia is intriguing from a developer's standpoint. I see it more of use for a social setting, a common room of sorts. Any thought of using Windows 8's apps always starts with "My friends/family and I could use this if ..... " It seems very concurrent with the social media and technology advancements.

Certainly, this won't ever replace my trusty desktop now or in the future. But with technology changing, it does produce some formidable thought of keeping up with the Joneses.

Developers need to push out what the masses want -- If we are to let them eat cake, I might as well have a piece for myself.

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If I had a touchsmart I sure would. I downloaded the developer preview last night and am running it on a standard notebook. Becuase of how I use my notebook at home and work I shy away from desktops, but my wife uses her's for our photography buisness.

If you can find a deal on one get it and try it out. I myself will be waiting for some newer hardware to come out. Just put it on a second partition and dual boot until you are comfortable with it.

@bloodshedder: I agree, whole heartedly. I won't be giving up my keyboard and mouse for a lonnngg time. Something must be engraved into my soul that it is easier to lift a finger rather than my whole arm.

However: The thought of having a touch screen for multimedia is intriguing from a developer's standpoint. I see it more of use for a social setting, a common room of sorts. Any thought of using Windows 8's apps always starts with "My friends/family and I could use this if ..... " It seems very concurrent with the social media and technology advancements.

Certainly, this won't ever replace my trusty desktop now or in the future. But with technology changing, it does produce some formidable thought of keeping up with the Joneses.

Developers need to push out what the masses want -- If we are to let them eat cake, I might as well have a piece for myself.

Touch makes sense for a desktop in limited situations. Most importantly, you need to have the screen CLOSE to you. If you are reaching out a lot, you're not going to enjoy it. At my desk, not one of my monitors is even within reach for me.

Beyond that, it depends on what you are doing. Touchcreen phones and tablets have had their apps designed for touch. Most desktop apps... not. So much of it would just be gimmicky. Maybe as a kitchen PC, this might be nice. Not as a "normal" desktop.

Now Windows 8 looks pretty exciting in this regard, as there seems to be a strong focus on promoting touch, without hindering the mouse and keyboard input. For a desktop, that sounds great because most things still need that mouse and keyboard, and weren't designed for touch.

If I had the cash (I don't) this might be fun to play with. Just to play with. I can't imagine using it for anything other than that. Moving on to my HP Touchpad, I'd be really interested to see THAT running Win8....

I didn't pick one up, I'm actually downloading Windows 8's source code and seeing what I can do with it. I've been told it can be run just fine without a touchscreen, and I plan to test it in that manner. Hoping someone is able to port it to an HP Touchpad webOS tablet.

@apfrehm: Kitchen PC or my crafting room PC is what I was shooting for. Something with easy-to-access multimedia options.

I think I'll wait a little. I'm certain I'll pick something up one day -- or at least wait until the official version of Windows 8 comes out. That would be cool to see if someone CAN port it to the webOS tablet. It'd be cool -- we could take some of those cheap chinese knockoffs with a 1ghz+ processor and port it for cheap.

I have a HP Touchsmart which came with Windows7, 64 bit. Touch worked, but the screen felt unresponsive, and the whole touch experience was very much less than exiting. Just installed Win 8 developer version. Had to do a fresh install - ugrade didn't work (the installation process couldn't decide if the PC was able to run Win 8). The installation process was longer than demonstrated in some YouTube videos. What a difference. The screen turned out to be very responsive, like on a good tablet (I have ASUS transformer to compare with - have also some experience with iPad2)). The machine also seemed to have been upgraded with a much faster processor. No crashes so far, but I didn't install much software, only Flash 11. For some reason, Flash works with IE when run from the desktop view, not when started from the Metro screen. Very impressed so far.

I should add that there are some rough edges. I have some way to go to master Metro. Difficult to quit an application, and have to close it with Task manager. Difficult to configure the wireless connection. Tend to switch to regular desktop view quite often. Wouldn't use Win 8 on my main machine, but on my kitchen TouchSmart PC which is mainly used for internet browsing, Win 8 shines.

@tskjaerpe: Yeah I've heard that Win7 touch was just sort of bungled all together. As far as Flash on Desktop version of IE instead of Touch version that is because they are totally separate programs and the touch version is geared towards total HTML 5 saturation and going to be completely "plug in" free. Which is actually nice given the sort of power HTML 5 has.

@tskjaerpe: Also Windows 8 is more than a year out. This isn't even a Beta. More like an Alpha...so tons will change closer to release.

As far as quitting apps. You can always hit alt+f4 or go to task manager, but in reality the apps don't take up any processing power when not in focus (unlike older versions of the OS). At most they will take up a few megs of RAM in the stack, but it's not like the old days where they'll clog up your system when running in the background. They are tombstoned and almost literally non-existent until brought back into focus. That said I'm sure they'll have an easier way to close them in the future.

I own a touch smart 310 that I have had almost a year. I'm downloading windows 8 as I type this. I use my PC for school and listening to music, basic things I suppose. I think this new style rocks and I own a windows phone 7 which I adore. I also have a hp touchpad I got just to play around on , and I find it suits my needs as a student and an "on the go" peron

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